


the serpent and the rainbow

by dolcemorte



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), and lorenz and bad decisions, claude is just here in spirit, the real ship is lorenz and repressed homosexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22876144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolcemorte/pseuds/dolcemorte
Summary: how curious is a man with a flower.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 5
Kudos: 43





	the serpent and the rainbow

**Author's Note:**

> "I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.”
> 
> ― Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

"You are simply a _saint_." Ferdinand coos, his voice warm and sweet as honey. Sipping tea as if unbothered by the war raging outside, the heavy black thing that staining their hands and souls. His eyes as bright as always, despite the crescents of darkness beneath them.

Lorenz scoffs, ignoring his cup to twirl an errant strand of deep purple hair around his fingers. The word _'traitor'_ is on the tip of their tongues; how hard it must be to betray your friends, to betray your classmates. They're all traitors in the eyes of someone. Eyes that he knew would pierce his very soul, colored the deep sage of flourishing spring flora.

Sadness in the eyes of lions and deer, pierced by spears and arrows, dying in fields stained with their own blood. 

It is only regret that makes him remember the comforting touch of Claude, the way his blood would rush when their fingers would so much as brush. It was shame. If there was one thing Lorenz had gotten good at hiding over the years, it was his own unforgivable shames. Those dulcet tones drown him in his dreams, gently, as scavengers pick his bones clean. Betrayal made him sick.

Awoken to the cold, arched ceilings, shadows clinging to unfamiliar corridors. Only pride keeps Lorenz screaming out into the somber nights. In every mirror his rose was an unpleasant splash of crimson, like a luster hole of gore adorning his chest. The heavy, red flesh, glossy as if bloodied by the many conflicts he had seen.

"Hardly."

The reply came out harsher than Lorenz meant, but he couldn't be bothered to apologize. He schools his expression. "Make use of me like an other soldier." He just takes a prim sip of tea and crosses his long, bony legs. The Empire and Kingdom would tear each other apart with or without him, the Alliance as well.

Pain throbbed in the space between his eyes, a yearning deep in his breast fluttering like the panicked flutter of sparrows at the thought. A sadness lurked in the kind eyes of his most trusted friend, a pity nearly invisible in the dark of the room, if not for the dancing flicker of candlelight across ancient walls. Lorenz looks out a narrow, stained glass window, into his own face reflected. Perhaps he really hasn't changed much from the scrawny boy of his youth, desperate to be something more than the common-folk. 

His reflection once again looked as if his humanity had taken leave of him, a husk dressed in pretty purples. Left back in the past, with friends whose smiles were cast in pure gold.

"Oh, don't undersell yourself. You're quite the asset for the Empire, you know. I am also pleased we don't have to meet on opposite sides of the battlefield, my friend." Ferdinand smiles, bright as any flame. He's far too genuine for his own good at times.

"Don't oversell me," Lorenz murmurs, sniffing and stirring his already cold tea. He reclined into the stiff cushions of his chair, bathing his features in pale moonlight. They sat together like the moon and sun in the same sky, side by side. One was warm and the other cold.

He would likely fall before he ever met Calude again, and perhaps he secretly wished it so, for he could never escape the shackles of his youth despite the years. Nobility was the cage, Lorenz himself, a beaten animal inside it. On display for the amusement of the faceless, jeering masses. In his nightmares, he sees Claude in those crowds. All good will between them, what little it had seemed, lost like sand swept away by the sea.

He joined the Empire to help, to prevent unnecessary deaths. That's what he tells himself. Not someone who puts himself and his weakness before helping people.

"This is all terribly droll, but I think I shall get a wink of sleep." Sleep before the seed of doubt could lodge itself more firmly into his chest, bloom into something he truly regrets. He wasn't a boy, yet he still ran from his fears and fancies as if chased by wolves. All of their howls sounded like his father. 

Ferdinand stared at him for a moment, before his features creased with barely hidden worry. He sets his tea cup down and nods. The silence feels like a stranglehold; his unknowing is not ignorance, but rather what is likely a small kindness. His friend is giving him the time to think this through, as the rest of the Empire had not. Ferdinand brusquely departs with a fond, but no less pitying farewell. It makes Lorenz feel ill. Sitting alone in the darkness, with just his decisions crawling on his back, in his conscious.

Red rose. Alone with all his thoughts.

\-----

When the armies reach their doorstep, the lions calling for blood - Lorenz will not hesitate. Even as he lays dying in his own rose-red blood, he wishes to see those green eyes once more, and tell himself he still has a choice.

**Author's Note:**

> *sad trombone noises* i just like empire lorenz angst and i'm sleep deprived.
> 
> i wrote this to nothing but loops of laurence's theme from bloodborne. it is both grand and tragic.


End file.
